On Sept. 5, Catholics celebrate the feast of St. Teresa of Calcutta, popularly known as Mother Teresa, and this year marks 10 years since she was declared a saint by the Catholic Church.
The beloved religious sister was known globally for her work among the poorest of the poor in India and for founding the Missionaries of Charity.
Yet behind the familiar image are aspects of her life that may not be as well-known:
1. She wasn’t born in India
Mother Teresa was born Anjezë (Agnes) Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in 1910 in Skopje, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire and is now the capital of North Macedonia. She came from an ethnic Albanian family and was the youngest of five children – two of whom died in infancy.
2. She entered religious life at 18
At age 12, she felt called to serve the poor and at 18, left home to join the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, known as the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish order of nuns, with the intention to serve in India.
3. How she chose her name
Upon her arrival at Rathfarnham Abbey in Ireland, she took the name Teresa after St. Thérèse of Lisieux, a 19th-century French nun known as the “Little Flower” who was known for her simplicity and doing things in her “Little Way.”
4.She was a teacher
Before beginning her work among the poor, Mother Teresa taught in India for nearly two decades. After making her first vows in 1931, she was assigned to the Loretto Entally community and taught at St. Mary’s
Bengali Medium School for girls in Calcuttta. In 1944 she became principal.
5. A ‘call within a call’
On Sept. 10, 1946, Mother Teresa experienced what she would refer to as the “call within a call.” She received inspiration from God asking her to establish a religious community that would serve the poorest of the poor.
6. She didn’t answer immediately
In August 1948, Teresa left the Loreto convent and went to medical training with the Medical Mission Sisters in Patna. In December, she returned to Calcutta and worked in the slums, tending to the sick and dying.
On Oct. 7, 1950, she established the congregation of the Missionaries of Charity.
7. She founded branches for men
Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity Brothers in 1963 and in 1984 the Missionaries of Charity Fathers. She also created groups for lay people.
8. She received the Nobel Peace Prize
When Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, she asked that the money that would have been spent on the customary banquet instead be given to the poor.
9. She experienced spiritual darkness
She endured decades of what she described as profound interior darkness. Despite being a woman of deep prayer, her letters revealed that she sometimes felt distant from God even as she continued serving him.
10. Worldwide reach
Today the Missionaries of Charity have 754 homes in 138 countries around the world and a little more than 5,000 nuns serving the poorest of the poor.
— Francesca Pollio Fenton, Catholic News Agency
St. Teresa’s daily prayer
St. Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997) adapted this prayer from John Henry Cardinal Newman’s “Meditations and Prayers.” She said it with her Missionaries of Charity sisters daily.
Radiating Christ
Dear Jesus,
Help me to spread Your fragrance everywhere I go.
Flood my soul with Your Spirit and Life.
Penetrate and possess my whole being
So utterly that my life may only be
A radiance of Yours.
Shine through me and be so in me
That every soul I come in contact with
May feel Your presence in my soul.
Let them look up,
And see no longer me, but only Jesus!
Stay with me and then I will begin
To shine as You shine,
So to shine as to be a light to others.
The light, O Jesus, will be all from You;
None of it will be mine.
It will be You, shining on others through me.
Let me thus praise You
In the way You love best,
By shining on those around me.
Let me preach You without preaching,
Not by words but by example,
By the catching force,
The sympathetic influence of what I do,
The evident fullness of the love
My heart bears for You.
Amen.
—Mother Teresa Center